We tend to blame ourselves when we are unsuccessful at changing our behavior, whether it is instilling a good habit, such as introducing more physical activity into our day, or breaking an unproductive habit, such as overeating or drinking too much alcohol. We berate ourselves for not having enough willpower or self-control, we beat ourselves up over how weak or uncommitted we are, we end up feeling bad about ourselves and, sooner or later, we revert to our old behaviors.

Sound familiar? Well, stop it! Instead of playing the blame game, says social psychologist Wendy Wood, Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at the University of Southern California, learn how habits work, and apply those research-based principles to form habits that enrich your life, rather than detract from it. Wood, author of Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes that Stick, presented research on habits at the annual University of Pennsylvania Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) alumni Summit the weekend of October 23-24, 2021.

The Myth of Intention and Agency in Habits

Habits are behaviors tied to mental associations between performance contexts (cues that can include where we are, what time it is, and who we are with) and responses. Habits are a learning system that involves repeating a behavior and getting rewarded for it. Once formed, habits are not in our conscious access. An ingrained habit takes no thought or intention to carry out; it is a practiced response that comes to mind when we perceive the context. Habits are efficient in that they free up our brain for doing and thinking about other things.

We tend to overlook the role of habits in our lives. Our bias is to interpret all of our actions, even the ambiguous ones, as intentional – a result of our agency. “We have a belief that we are in charge,” says Wood. But Wood’s research has found that habits control much more than we might have guessed: on a daily basis, conscious decisions are behind 57 percent of our behaviors, while 43 percent of our behaviors are attributable to habits that we repeat in the same context, often while our thoughts are engaged elsewhere.

Habits are not goals, though people tend to confuse the two, says Wood. Goals are motivating and achievable end states, and goals that involve one-off behaviors may be accomplished through decision-making and willpower. But goals that necessitate repeated behaviors in order to achieve success (such as physical fitness) require us to form new habits and/or change old habits.

People who score high in measures of self-control often are good at achieving desirable goals such as eating in a healthy way, exercising, and getting enough sleep. But research has found that while a high level of self-control predicts successful goal achievement, habits are the reason that the goals are achieved, not the exertion of self-control. The good news is that if healthy habits are already in place, we are just as likely to fall back on the productive habits when we are on auto-pilot as we are to access any counterproductive ones.

Forming New Habits and Making Them Stick

Three factors work in tandem to form new habits, good and bad:

• Context – Context consists of the when, where, and with whom situational cues that trigger a given behavioral response.

• Behavior – Forming a new habit involves repeating a behavior (your response to the context) in the same way each time until it becomes automatic. The easier the behavior is to do repeatedly, the easier it will be to form a new habit.

• Reward – Research on New Year’s resolutions finds that those who succeed in building new habits also succeed in making the experience positive, enjoyable, engaging, rewarding, and fun. Brain science explains: The hit of dopamine the brain receives when doing something rewarding is what builds the habit. Dopamine’s effect in the brain lasts for less than a minute, but that is enough time to tie together what is currently in our memory and link the context with the behavioral response. The reward then creates the craving to repeat the behavior again and again.

Habits can start very intentionally, with setting a goal, making decisions, and experimenting to figure out what combination of context, behavior, and reward works best for us. Approaching habit formation like a researcher and scientist sets you up for success. For example:

• Find times in your day over which you consistently have control and a minimum of interruptions, and build your habits in those spaces. When is that for you? Early in the morning before the phone starts ringing and the kids need attention? Or perhaps a block of time in the middle of the day when your phone is set on “Do Not Disturb” and your co-workers know you are not reachable, except in emergencies? Maybe yours is later in the evening. Many people set aside time right before bed to pray, journal, or perform a gratitude practice.

• Enlist others in your effort to form new patterns of behavior. Exercising with a friend or spouse may be more enjoyable to you than exercising alone, provides a social benefit, and affords a measure of accountability to each other that reinforces the behavior.

• Remove the “friction” that creates barriers to the desired behavior, and set up your environment to make the behavior easier to do. Lay out your workout clothes every night so that they are ready to put on as soon as you get out of bed. Stock your fridge with non-alcoholic drinks and mixers if you want to cut back on drinking. Have lots of nutritious food on hand, and purchase it already prepped to facilitate meal preparation. Plan and schedule your focus blocks of effort the night before and set up your work space so that you can get started with your work on a productive note.

• Bundle your temptations: Rewards do not have to be intrinsic to the behavior you are working to instill. Rewards can be extrinsic as well, as long as they are immediate so that the dopamine rush serves to connect the context and your response in your memory. Delayed gratification does not work to form habits because by the time the reward comes (a bonus at the end of the month, or a level of fitness after weeks of working out), the mind does not connect the context with the behavior. Research has shown that temptation bundling – pairing immediately enjoyable but guilt-inducing “want” experiences (listening to your favorite podcast) with healthy or otherwise valuable “should” behaviors that by themselves offer delayed rewards (exercising) – is an effective way to help instill the “should” behavior as a habit.

• Bring the party! “We are not likely to form a habit around a behavior that we hate,” says Wood. So make those hum-drum tasks fun and meaningful! Add music and dance to laundry sorting and folding. Limit screen time by setting up a weekly family game night with old-fashioned board games. Set a timer and turn cleaning the bathroom into a game of “beat the clock.” Or create a special ritual around weeding the garden.

Breaking Unwanted Habits

According to Wood, those who seek to stop repeating old, unproductive, unwanted habits can have more of an uphill battle, because habit memories are very slow-moving and persistent. But Wood has research-based suggestions for how to overcome and change even the most entrenched undesirable habits. They involve identifying and disrupting the combination of context, behavior, and reward that triggers and reinforces the bad habit:

• Remove cues that trigger the habit. In other words, change the context. Moving from one residence to another, a relationship breakup, or starting a new job are often opportunities to try on new habits because the cues are different. When the context is disrupted, we need to make conscious decisions about our behaviors and can develop new patterns. In the absence of a situational change, we can still decide to structure our lives differently and put thought into how we can remove some old cues that trigger undesirable habits.

• Add “friction” to the bad habit to make it harder to practice. Like the law of physics, a habit in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. So create some outside forces to stop or discourage the action. Add time, distance, or other disruptions and barriers to make that habit harder to fall into. This tactic was used successfully to reduce smoking rates: through taxation, removing TV ads, banning smoking in public places, and putting cigarettes behind a counter to require people to ask for them. A study on elevator use found that simply encouraging people to take the stairs had no effect, but delaying the closing of elevator doors by 16 seconds cut elevator trips by 33 percent and increased the use of the stairs, which burns five times more calories than taking the elevator. Tempted by sugary treats that your spouse loves to eat for dessert? Take that candy out of the basket on the kitchen counter and put it in a paper bag behind closed pantry doors, or wrap up that cake and put it in the freezer.

• Replace the unwanted habit with a new, more productive habit. If stress causes smoking, nail-biting, or eating junk food for you, then experiment with finding a healthier behavior to do when you feel stressed. It may be meditating, drinking herbal tea, chewing sugarless gum, or taking a walk around the block. If checking social media constantly feeds your need for connection, replace that behavior with dedicated times for face-to-face connections with family and friends.

Patience, Grasshopper!

Contrary to popular wisdom, the time it takes to form a new habit depends on the particular mix of context, behavior, and reward. Wood says the best evidence about the average time it takes to form a simple habit (one that is automated and does not require thought or intention) is two to three months. So be patient, self-compassionate, and smart about which habits you choose to start and stop. And then follow the research to create the habits you desire.

References

Barnett, M. (2019).  Good habits, bad habits: A conversation with Wendy Wood. Behavioral Scientist. Retrieved on November 10, 2021, from https://behavioralscientist.org/good-habits-bad-habits-a-conversation-with-wendy-wood/ 

Galla, B. M., & Duckworth, A. L. (2015). More than resisting temptation: Beneficial habits mediate the relationship between self-control and positive life outcomes. Journal of personality and social psychology, 109(3), 508.

Healthline.com. How Long Does It Take for a New Behavior to Become Automatic? Retrieved on November 10, 2021, from https://www.healthline.com/health/how-long-does-it-take-to-form-a-habit 

Houten, R. V., Nau, P. A., & Merrigan, M. (1981). Reducing elevator energy use: A comparison of posted feedback and reduced elevator convenience. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 14(4), 377-387.

Milkman, K. L., Minson, J. A., & Volpp, K. G. (2014). Holding the hunger games hostage at the gym: An evaluation of temptation bundling. Management Science, 60(2), 283–299. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2013.1784

Neal, D. T., Wood, W., & Drolet, A. (2013). How do people adhere to goals when willpower is low? The profits (and pitfalls) of strong habits. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(6), 959.

Neal, D. T., Wood, W., Labrecque, J. S., & Lally, P. (2012). How do habits guide behavior? Perceived and actual triggers of habits in daily life. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(2), 492-498.

Wood, W., Quinn, J. M., & Kashy, D. A. (2002). Habits in everyday life: thought, emotion, and action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(6), 1281.

Woolley, K., & Fishbach, A. (2017). Immediate rewards predict adherence to long-term goals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(2), 151-162.

Wood, W. (2019). Good habits, bad habits: The science of making positive changes that stick. Pan Macmillan.

Wood, W. (2021, October 23-24). Virtual Summit plenary presentation to University of Pennsylvania Master of Applied Positive Psychology alumni on habits.

About the Author: Karen F. Deppa, MAPP (C’15), is principal of PilotLight Resilience Resources, through which she has developed a class called Respond with Resilience™ to help prevent behavioral health problems in the emergency services community. She is lead author of the 2016 Springer e-book Resilience Training for Firefighters: An Approach to Prevent Behavioral Health Problems. Karen and her family live on a farm in rural Montgomery County, Maryland. Karen is an Associate Editor of MAPP Magazine.